1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a probe and a probe set for detecting a gene of infectious disease pathogenic bacterium, Clostridium (genus), which are useful for detection and identification of the causative organism of an infectious disease, a probe-immobilized carrier on which the probe or the probe set is immobilized, a genetic testing method using the probe-immobilized carrier, and a genetic testing kit to be used for the method.
2. Related Background Art
Heretofore, reagents for and methods of quickly and accurately detecting the causative organisms of infectious diseases in analytes have been proposed. For instance, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H08-089254 discloses oligonucleotides having specific base sequences, which can be respectively used as probes and primers for detecting pathogenic bacteria of candidiasis and aspergillosis, and a method of detecting target bacteria using such oligonucleotides. In addition, the same patent document also discloses a set of primers used for concurrently amplifying a plurality of target bacteria by PCR. In other words, those primers are used for the PCR amplification of nucleic acid fragments from fungi, which serve as a plurality of targets, in an analyte. Target fungal species in the analyte can be identified by detecting the presence of a specific part of the sequence by a hybridization assay using probes specific to the respective fungi and the nucleic acid fragments amplified by the respective primers.
On the other hand, the method to use probe array in which probes having sequences complementary to the respective base sequences are arranged at intervals on a solid support is known as a method capable of simultaneously detecting a plurality of oligonucleotides having different base sequences (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-313181).